Two Years in KiwiLand: Piha (Sept. 6, 2008)

Well, I just finished my first week of work. They pretty much put me right into the mix of things. I started doing client work on day 2. Maybe I'll put up a separate post sometime about my thoughts on work here compared to home, but I'll try to stick to the things I do outside of work since nobody wants to hear about auditing around the world.

Anyway, I had picked up a rental car on the day I arrived in Auckland. I was terrified to drive on the left side of the road especially with the ridiculous rules they have here and a lot of traffic (see some of my comments about this in my observations post). So I basically memorized the map from the rental car office to my apartment. Once I got it to my apartment, I had them park it in the garage and that's where it stayed for the whole week (I was only about a 10 minute walk to the office). Since I wanted to go see some things and figured I had to learn to drive on the left at some point, I decided to take a little road trip on my first full weekend here.

From talking to some people at work, I heard that there was a really nice beach called Piha which was only about 45 min. from downtown. I have really been having trouble with the place names here as they all seem to be Maori-influenced. The Maoris were the original inhabitants of New Zealand and there are still a lot of them around today. Anyway, I can hardly pronounce, let alone remember most of the places around here. I will try to doclink to many of them so you can read more about them. Anyway, Piha is in the Waitakere Ranges which is a beautiful area just outside of Auckland. I drove up for the day and spent some time walking around the beach and climbing a huge rock called Lion Rock out on the beach. Then I did a little hiking around the area. It was a beautiful day. The weather is still a little chilly here (probably around 60 degrees F) so it will still be a few months before the real beach weather kicks in, but it was still a good day to walk around and take in some of NZ's natural beauty. Check out some pictures from Piha below.

On the drive home I saw a flash come from the side of the road. I didn't realize it but they have speed cameras here in NZ. Turns out I was "speeding." My ticket said I was going 11Km/hr over the speed limit. That is like 6 miles per hour which is ridiculous. Apparently, you get pulled over or ticketed for anything in this country. I think I will have to add this to my "Bad" observations about this place.